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The infographic below is an informative look into the world of ICO. So what is an ICO? Well if you’re familiar with the acronym IPO (Initial Public Offering), it’s when a company opens stocks to the public in order to raise funds, and if the stock goes up in price, then everyone that bought it’s stocks profits. In a similar fashion, ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering, and is a way for people to invest in Fintech companies offering a new digital currency. This helps to raise funds for a particular project, in return for their cash, contributors get a portion of the initial coin supply, and if it’s successful, then the company and the early adopters profit. This also helps to solve a problem of initial coin distribution, as the coins already get distributed to all of the early adopters. It can be quite lucrative, as an example, a company called Golem “the Uber of computers”, was able to raise $8.6 million dollars in just 20 minutes with their ICO! Now that doesn’t mean that every company will do that, but it’s an example of what a well launched ICO can accomplish.The first ever ICO started on the 22nd of July, 2014, and was the beginning of Ethereum’s ICO. Since the first, from 2014 to the present (2016), some of the major ICO projects have included: Ethereum, XCloudCoin, Sembro, Breakout Gaming (BRK), The Draftcoin Gaming Network (BTCDRAFT), MaidSafeCoin, NeuCoin, Augur, ZiftRCoin, SingulardTV, Bitrush Corp., Iconomi, Synereo, FirstBlood, XauRum, Digix Dau (DG), PeerPlays, Lisk, Waves (WVS), Kibo, and Golem.

The largest ICO yet was Ethereum, who raised $18,439,086 million dollars on their ICO, while the lowest ICO that we deemed to still be successful was Synereo, with a grand total of $4,701,421 million dollars… not too shabby.

Some have shared their concerns that the ability for any company to open an ICO may muddy the waters of finding truly innovative technologies for the future. Though this is a possibility, we’ve seen great companies rise up with their ICOs already. It’s like IPO’s, some will succeed, some will fail, those that are great will rise above the rest. It’s ultimately up to how good the company really is, how well they communicate that to the community, and finally what the people ultimately decide. If a company truly is innovative, and they can share that well and to the proper audience, then they should be able to use a well done ICO to launch themselves into the future.